For fans in the know, Emily Guan (官靈芝) was a cherished name on the pub circuit long before her venture into fusion jazz brought her back-to-back awards and wider recognition.
In June, Guan won the Best Hakka Singer Golden Melody Award for her album You in the Past (頭擺的你), and two months later she won a Taiwan Original Pop Music Award (台灣流行音樂大獎).
“If you told me last year I would win two awards this year, I would never have believed it,” Guan said in an interview last week.
Photo Courtesy of Better-One
A celebrated pub singer for 30 years, Guan had previously released five jazz albums sung in a mixture of English, Spanish and Portuguese.
“My mother died last year, and that made me want to record a jazz album in her mother tongue, Hakka, as a tribute,” Guan said.
For You in the Past, Guan reinterpreted three Hakka folk classics, including Sky God Rains on Us (天公落水), and the work of contemporary songwriters. On the album’s title track she sings about a Hakka woman who, while watching the rain, dreams about pursuing her own ambitions.
Photo Courtesy of Better-One
In Mase Mase, written by Guan, she condemns a lover who comes home drunk.
“I want to subvert the image of Hakka music,” Guan said. “We are not always wholesome and sweet. We can be modern and biting.”
In Autumn Breeze and Broken Dream (秋風夢殘), the song for which Guan won the Taiwan Original Pop Music Award, she describes her disillusionment after discovering her love was misplaced.
“I wrote this song after I broke up with my boyfriend last year,” Guan said laughing. “Can you imagine it? I caught him cheating twice.”
Guan’s parents run a traditional theater troupe, and the singer first appeared on stage aged 3. She began performing in pubs when she was a teen and became entranced with jazz after her late husband introduced her to it.
“What’s so intriguing about jazz is that it demands you improvise and put your personal stamp on a song,” Guan said.
Guan says she intends to follow up the success of You in the Past with another Hakka album that focuses on Brazilian jazz.
A seasoned pub singer equally at home with pop, rock and jazz, Guan performs Friday nights at Taipei’s Lotus Music Restaurant (Lotus音樂餐廳).
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